Office rent in Zurich 2026: price per m² by area

The figures first

An office in the city of Zurich costs a median CHF 385 per square metre per year. That's the figure in the 2026 market report by CSL Immobilien, based on rents advertised in 2025. In the City it's CHF 625, in Zurich West 360, in Oerlikon 295 and in Altstetten 250. For 150 square metres, room for about twelve workstations, that means between just over CHF 3,100 and about CHF 7,800 a month, before service charges.

Search for the price of an office in Zurich and you mostly find listings: single offers, each with its own price, no date and nothing to compare it with. We've gathered the figures that let you compare one area with another: the CSL market report, prime rents from Wüest Partner, availability rates from JLL, the city's last official figures and a real rent paid by the City of Zurich itself. On top of that comes what the price per square metre leaves out: service charges, fit-out and VAT.

What an office in Zurich costs per square metre

In Switzerland office rents are quoted per square metre per year, not per month. A listing saying "420.–/m² p.a." therefore means CHF 35 per square metre per month. An up-to-date overview by area comes from CSL Immobilien (in German), a Zurich real estate firm that analyses the office space advertised each year. The report splits the city of Zurich into 13 market areas and gives a median and a price range for each.

The median is the middle value: half the offers are above it, half below. The range shows how far prices spread within one area, and that spread is often wider than the gap between two areas. In Enge it runs from CHF 350 to 680, in Altstetten from 190 to 425. So the expensive end of Altstetten sits above the cheap end of Enge. The page doesn't say exactly what share of the offers the range covers.

It's also worth knowing what these figures are not. They're asking rents, prices taken from listings. They don't show what ends up in the lease, and how much room there is to negotiate depends heavily on how much space stands empty in an area. That's why it pays to look at the areas one by one, starting with the most expensive.

City, Enge and Seefeld: CHF 500 and up

You pay the most in the centre. CSL gives the City a median of CHF 625, with a range from 440 to 820. For the CBD, the central business district as a whole, it's CHF 555. The previous year's report had CHF 550 for 2024, after a rise of 11 percent. So the figure barely moved in 2025. Enge, Seefeld, Oberstrass and Unterstrass all sit between CHF 500 and 520.

At the very top of the market, prices go much higher again. Wüest Partner most recently puts prime rents in Zurich at CHF 1,050 per square metre per year, after CHF 1,100 in 2024 and 2025 and CHF 860 in 2016. Those prices apply to the best space at the best addresses. They're no yardstick for an ordinary office in District 1, but they show how far prices in the centre can stretch.

Good space stays scarce there. According to JLL, the supply of available office space in District 1 and the adjacent Districts 2, 4, 5, 6 and 8 fell by over 35,000 square metres in 2025, and prime rents rose. CSL, by contrast, counts more than twice as much advertised space in the City as the year before, just under 76,000 square metres, and gives new offices on Bahnhofstrasse as one reason, for example on the upper floors of the former Manor and Jelmoli department stores. The two reports don't measure the same thing. What they agree on is that offices in the centre remain in demand.

For you, that means little room on price in the centre; you're more likely to get somewhere on the term, the fit-out and the handover date. It gets a little cheaper as soon as you leave the centre.

Zurich West, Wiedikon and Stauffacher: the middle

The areas that are well connected but not on Bahnhofstrasse sit between CHF 345 and 410. Stauffacher has a median of CHF 410, Zurich West 360, Wiedikon/Binz 355 and the Industriequartier 345. Wiedikon/Sihlfeld, at CHF 280, is already clearly lower.

The range at Stauffacher stands out: CHF 250 to 620. The median alone says little there; the individual building is what counts. In Zurich West the range is narrower, from CHF 245 to 475. For a company that wants to be central without paying city-centre prices, this middle band is an obvious compromise: the median is about CHF 265 below the City's, and it's a short trip into town.

Here a close look at the individual building is worth more than a look at the neighbourhood. Ask about the year it was built, the last renovation and what the landlord includes in the price. And where more space is still empty, you are in a stronger position when you negotiate.

Oerlikon and Altstetten: plenty of space, lower prices

On the edge of the city, offices aren't just cheaper; there's also far more space on offer. According to CSL, Oerlikon has a median of CHF 295, Altstetten 250 and Zurich South 260. In 2025 almost 109,000 square metres of office space were advertised in Oerlikon, the most of any of the city's 13 areas.

JLL shows where that comes from. In District 11, over 50,000 square metres became available in 2025 in the Quadro Towers and the Vertex and Skykey buildings. The availability rate, the share of empty space in the total stock, rose there from 6.4 to 11.9 percent within a year. According to JLL, half of all empty offices in the Zurich region are in just two submarkets: District 11 and Opfikon/Glattbrugg. For comparison, the availability rate for the whole Zurich region stood at 5.1 percent in the second quarter of 2026.

The City of Zurich itself shows what a real rent looks like in these areas. Its debt enforcement office for the district, the Stadtammann- und Betreibungsamt 9, has been housed in an office building at Hohlstrasse 550, near Altstetten station, since 2013. In May 2026 the City Council proposed extending the lease on unchanged terms until 2033.

Divide the CHF 202,331 by 650 square metres and you get about CHF 311 per square metre per year, storage and six parking spaces included. Unlike the CSL figures, this isn't an asking price but the rent under an existing lease. It's above the Altstetten median, but well within the range of CHF 190 to 425, even though the site is close to the station. The release doesn't say whether service charges are included or how much of it goes on office, storage and parking. Set this figure next to a listing and you see why the price per square metre is never enough on its own: you can only compare two offers once you know what's in them.

The last official figures by district

Official office rents by city district only go up to 2021. Until then, Statistik Stadt Zürich, the city's statistics office, asked the managers of larger buildings each year about empty space and also recorded the rents asked for office and practice space, net per square metre per year. 2021 was the last survey. The last figures:

For Districts 3, 6 and 10 the table puts its values in brackets, and for District 12 there's no value. So we've left them out. The figures are based only on space that stood empty on 1 June in buildings with at least 500 square metres of usable floor area.

The districts don't match the CSL areas exactly, so only a rough comparison is possible. But the pattern has stayed the same: District 1 at the top, Districts 2 and 8 next, Altstetten at the bottom and Oerlikon in the lower third. Back then the office vacancy rate for the whole city was 1.58 percent. Beyond the city limits, it gets cheaper still.

Outside the city: Glatt Valley, Zug and Winterthur

Outside the city of Zurich, prices drop quickly. For the Zurich economic area as a whole, CSL gives a median of CHF 235, which is CHF 150 below the city's. In the middle Glatt Valley it's CHF 225, in Winterthur and in Zimmerberg/Sihltal CHF 220 each, in the Limmat Valley 185 and in the Zurich Unterland 175. The areas along the lake are well above the regional median: Pfannenstiel at CHF 295 and Höfe at 275.

Zug has a median of CHF 250, with a range up to 495. There, according to CSL, supply grew by 61 percent in 2025, because new projects are already being advertised. More choice can mean more room on price there too. You'll find current listings under offices in Zug, and in the Glatt Valley under offices in Dübendorf, for example.

Winterthur is an office market in its own right, with its own prices: a median of CHF 220, a range from 145 to 300 and direct trains to Zurich. Whether a location outside the city pays off depends less on the price per square metre than on your staff and your clients. What gets added in every case, though, are the costs the price per square metre doesn't show.

Net, service charges, VAT: what the price leaves out

With every price, first check whether it's net or gross. The City of Zurich recorded net rents, without service charges. CSL doesn't say explicitly on its page whether its rents are net or gross. You only owe service charges (Nebenkosten) if the lease expressly provides for them (Art. 257a CO). For offices the list can be long: besides heating and electricity for common areas, it can include servicing the lift and ventilation, caretaking and a management fee.

A publicly available draft lease shows how much this adds up to. In it, the town of Illnau-Effretikon rents 316 square metres of office space in a new building at CHF 290 per square metre per year, and according to the draft from May 2023 (in German), CHF 750 a month is paid on account for service charges. That's about CHF 28.50 per square metre per year, just under a tenth of the net rent. In another building the amount can be much higher or lower. Ask for the service charge statements for the last few years. We've described what else such a lease contains in our post on commercial leases.

Two more items are easy to miss. The first is VAT. Renting out business premises is exempt from the tax (Art. 21 para. 2 no. 21 VAT Act), but the landlord can voluntarily opt to charge it (Art. 22 VAT Act). Then 8.1 percent is added, the standard rate since 2024. If a listing says "zzgl. MWST" (plus VAT), that's the case. The second is the floor area itself. The Effretikon draft states expressly that the rented area includes no added common space, so no share of the stairwell or corridors, and that differences in the measured area don't change the rent. If you pay per square metre, you should know how the space was measured. The same goes for whatever is already built into those square metres.

Fit-out: shell, upgraded shell or fully fitted

What a price per square metre is worth depends a lot on the fit-out. In Swiss listings you'll usually see one of three German terms. Rohbau (shell) means you essentially get an empty envelope and put in the floors, ceilings, lighting and walls yourself. With Edelrohbau (an upgraded shell), some of those parts are already in place, such as floors or ceilings, and you fit out the rest. Vollausbau (fully fitted) means the space is ready to move into. We found no binding standard that defines exactly what belongs to which term. So always ask for a building specification, room by room.

A low price per square metre for a shell is only cheap at first glance. You pay for the fit-out yourself, and depending on the lease you may have to remove it when you move out. Conversely, a higher price for a fully fitted space may include the landlord's fit-out costs. The Illnau-Effretikon draft spells this out: the landlord built the space fully fitted at the town's request, the cost is paid off through the rent over 20 years, and if the town doesn't take up the option for a further ten years, it pays a residual value of CHF 100,000 after ten years.

So for every offer, calculate over the whole term: rent plus your own fit-out, spread over the years you're sure to stay. On top of that, owners are increasingly upgrading existing buildings. In its analysis of the Swiss office market from August 2026, Wüest Partner puts renovation permits over the previous twelve months at around CHF 1.4 billion, the highest since 2009. For you, that may mean more renovated space on the market. Which leaves the question of how many square metres you actually need.

How much space you need and what it costs a month

The City of Zurich gives a benchmark for its own administration. Its space standards for office workstations from 2015 (in German) allow one workstation per 12.5 square metres of main usable floor area. That covers meeting rooms, quiet rooms and the kitchenette too, not just the desk. The city plans with shared desks so that desks don't sit empty when staff work part-time, work from home or are on holiday. By that rule, a team of twelve workstations needs about 150 square metres.

At the Zurich West median, 150 square metres cost CHF 54,000 a year or CHF 4,500 a month. With service charges at the level of the Effretikon payment on account, you get to about CHF 4,856. By median, the same space costs about CHF 7,813 in the City and CHF 3,125 in Altstetten, in each case without service charges. The difference between the City and Altstetten is therefore over CHF 55,000 a year, and on a five-year lease more than a quarter of a million.

This calculation doesn't replace a quote, but it quickly tells you whether an offer fits your budget and whether a price looks unusually high or low for its area. Add parking separately unless it's expressly included in the price.

Comparing offices in Zurich

With the medians in mind, you'll read every listing differently. Put the price next to the figure for its area, ask about service charges, fit-out and VAT, and work everything out per month and over the whole term.

Where a lot of space stands empty, as in Oerlikon or the Glatt Valley, you have more room to negotiate: on the rent, on a contribution to the fit-out or on the term. In the centre, where good space is scarce, that room is smaller. CSL's last two reports both came out in early February. Until the next one, the figures above are a sound yardstick for an office in Zurich.